Vendor News

LG announces a "sweeping realignment" across its various business, including the appointment of a new CEO for its mobile division-- Hwang Jeong-hwan, who replaces current chief Juno Cho.

Jeong-hwan is a long-time LG employee, having been involvied in the development of one of the first LG smartphones in 2009 as head of the CTO's multimedia R&D lab. In the meantime Juno Cho gets a new role within the LG parent company.

Another leadership change comes in the shape of a new CTO-- LG Software Centre head Dr. Park Il-pyung replaces current CTO Dr. Skott Ahn. Prior to joining LG, Dr. Park was CTO at the now Samsung-owned Harman International, as well as head of the Samsung Intelligent Computing Lab. Dr. Park also holds a number of computing patents, together with a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

The Irish High Court has a decision on Apple's plan to build a datacentre in the country, Reuters reports-- construction can go ahead, bringing relief for both the iPhone maker and the Irish government.

Apple announced it was going to invest €850 million in a datacentre in Derrydonnell, Galway county back in February 2015. The local council gave planning permission 6 months later but a series of appeals blocked the works for over 2 years.

Most recently residents attempted to stop the construction on November 2016, as they insisted the permission granted by the An Bord Pleanála planning authority was invailid. According to the allegations, the authority failed to do a proper impact assessment. This lead to Apple (successfully) asking the High Court to fast-track the case.

Microsoft OS designer Joe Belfiore takes to Twitter to confirm what many already suspected-- work on Windows Mobile is officially over, bringing an end to the Microsoft-powered smartphone.

Belfiore does say existing support phones will continue to receive bug fixes and security updates, but Microsoft is not working on new software features or hardware. This was to be expected, considering how new development builds of the mobile OS stopped appearing earlier this year.

One also has to keep in mind Windows Phone user volumes remained all too low, leading to developers dropping support for the platform even as Microsoft offered financial incentives.

Apple is a "semiconductor superpower in the making," Nikkei reports-- the iPhone maker is said to be pushing chip design efforts further in order to rely less on suppliers such as Intel and Qualcomm.

According to "industry sources in Asia," Apple is currently "invested in research and development" in a number of components making its devices. The first is the baseband modem chips required for cellular communications. To do so Apple has poached Esin Terzioglu, a modem chip engineer from current iPhone modem supplier Qualcomm, with whom Apple is locked in a bitter $1 billion dollar lawsuit over unpaid royalty rebates.

The second is "core processors for notebooks." Such chips would reduce dependence on Intel-- so much so Apple is said to be using an ARM-based (not x86) design. A final chip Apple is supposed to be working brings together "touch, fingerprint and display driver functions," and comes through a desire to "control next-generation display technology and some related key components."

Were you impressed by the iPhone X's Neural Engine-powered face-recognition? Huawei insists it isn't, as it posts a video on its Facebook page stating "facial recognition isn't for everyone."

Following that, the video also claims it will unveil a "real AI phone" on 16 October 2017-- meaning its latest flagship, the Mate 10.

Marketing bombast aside, Huawei might have something actually interesting to show off with the Mate 10. After all, it will be the first phone powered with the Chinese company's latest system-on-a-chip, the Kirin 970. Presented at IFA 2017, the Kirin 970 carries a "Neural Processing Unit" (NPU), a set of processing cores dedicated to AI tasks.

Belkin announces an addition to the Mixit DuraTek durable cable line-- a USB-C cable featuring Kevlar-reinforced conductors and double-braided nylon shielding on the outside.
The USB-C cable is certified by both...

Snap-- aka the rebranded Snapchat-- announces the Spectacles, its video-recording sunglasses, are now available in Europe, 7 months after an initial US launch.
For the unfamiliar, the Spectacles are a pair...